Whenever we're talking market share and Macs, it'll inevitably get late. There are different means of measuring market share, and different ways to interpret the resulting data, usually leading to heated debates about who is right and who isn't. Ars decided to take a look at the different methods of measurement and see what they mean.

I think what the real problem is that there is no real source for 'home' computer marketshare vs 'business' marketshare.

Most all desktop computers are in businesses....and its a given that about 99%+ of those run Windows. It's a lock-in...literally.

It would also seem that business desktop are probably 70-80% of all desktop computers in existence. (Don't really know, its a shame).

The only 'numbers' that we have for mac marketshare is like "9% OVERALL".

Well, that would mean that if you take out Business computers where Mac's don't even really compete, then your really talking about 20% of the market.

So Apple having 9% of the remaining 20% == ABOUT 45% OF THE HOME COMPUTER MARKET.

Thats mind blowing, and really could be the truth.

However, we have shitty numbers available from the research companies and they all focus on 'total marketshare.'

The problem with only using total marketshare is THIS:
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If your a software developer or whatever that has a program, like say a "Personal Tax Software" or something, or heck even a Game of some sort.....

If you just look at it as only '9%' of the market, you going to think to yourself....nope, not worth developing for Mac's.

But that's FALSE DATA, because your app is only competing in that 20% home computer market, your not going to sell your software to run on the 80% of the market desktops that are located in businesses...

...and your actually going to loose 45% of your potential customer base that way by missing the real data.

Some day software development houses will figure out they need better marketshare data to really do good business decisions.